In This Article:

Welcome Series for New Donors

In This Article:

Overview

When to use it

An email nurture campaign is one or more emails that are sent automatically at intervals that you define. Use this process if you'd like to queue up a series of emails which will be automatically sent supporters meeting both of the following two conditions:

The supporter is new to your list

The supporter was added to your list by making a donation via a Salsa donation page.

NOTE: If you'd like to set up a welcome series which will work for any new supporter (no matter how they were added to your database), check out our Welcome Series Primer.

Video

There's a similar (but simpler) process for creating a nurture campaign which can be added to any donation page. This process is page-specific and will queue up a series of emails as soon as a donor makes a donation via a particular page. This process is different from the process described on this page in the following ways:

It is page specific - using the process in the video you can have a different series of emails for each donation page

It is inclusive of all donors - The process on this page only sends emails to donors who are new to your list overall (i.e. they were not in your supporter list before they made a donation). The process in the video will send emails to all donors - whether they're new or not.

Details

Create the selection query

The selection query will use Relative Date Queries. If you're not familiar with them, then please click here.

For our example, we want the new supporters - those who's record was created in the last 24 hours.

The query should make sure that the supporters came from a web page. This makes sure that supporters that were imported are not included.

To restrict these query results to only those supporters who were created by a specific donation page, add the Source_Details condition shown where the value = %donation page key%.

Create the greedy smart group

A greedy smart group in Salsa is a group that's updated by a query. Supporters added to the group stay in the group until they are removed (thus "greedy").

Greedy smart groups have an amazing capability -- they can send out a streaming email or autoresponse to a supporter when the supporter is added to the group. This is perfect for a nurture campaign. Here's what happens:

A query runs to find supporters that match the criteria

The supporter gets added to the group

When the supporter is added to the group, Salsa sends the supporter a streaming email.

Note: The next night, the same supporter will be selected again, but they're already in the greedy smart group. Since they're already there, they won't be added, and the streaming email won't be sent again.

Here's a sample configuration that uses the query that we created above:

Create the streaming emails

Streaming emails, like regular email blasts, can have supporter fields like First_Name and expiration_date and Membership Level embedded into them. Since we are targeting supporters who were created in the last 24 hours, the message can be personalized to the new supporter's needs and interests.

Conclusion

We've found that a mixture of

Date Range queries,

Greedy smarty groups, and

Streaming emails

Can be used to automate a series of emails for new users. The query find new supporters relative to the time that the query is run. Greedy smart groups collect the supporters found by the query, then queue up a series of streaming emails as the supporter is added to the smart group.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact Salsa Support and we'll be glad to answer them.

Both types of smart groups run the query they're based on each day - you don't need to manually run the query. It is precisely this feature which makes the group "smart."

The difference between them is this:

Regular smart groups automatically run the query each day and update the membership of the group to anyone who currently meets the conditions of the query. Anyone who used to meet the conditions of the query, but no longer does, will no longer be in the group.

Greedy smart groups automatically run the query each day and add any new people who meet the conditions of the query to the group. Once they are in the greedy smart group they are always in it - the group gets bigger and bigger and no one is ever taken out.

We encourage you to use greedy smart groups for a welcome series because you only want people to receive the welcome series one time. The welcome series kicks off at the time a person is added to the group, so using a greedy smart groups keeps the series from being repeated for the same supporter.